{"id":488720,"date":"2026-05-17T04:42:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T04:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/488720\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T04:42:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T04:42:45","slug":"dazzling-photographs-show-nature-in-a-new-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/488720\/","title":{"rendered":"Dazzling photographs show nature in a new way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photographer Jon McCormack has found himself repelling into Arctic ice caves in Svalbard, Norway, diving into the frigid waters off the coast of British Columbia and hanging out of helicopter doors above southern Kenya all in search of his next great picture. <\/p>\n

But despite many grand adventures, it was an unlikely set of photos he took just a mile from his home that propelled him on a years-long endeavor to photograph nature from a new perspective. <\/p>\n

It was 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic had brought McCormack\u2019s world to a halt. So he began a new routine: A nightly walk along the beach near his house in Pacific Grove, California. His camera made the trip with him. <\/p>\n

A week into the practice, McCormack began to notice how the landscape would shift daily. \u201cThis magical combination of the tide, the light, the wind, would create these little compositions that kind of exist only sort of one time,\u201d McCormack said during a recent interview with CNN. \u201cI really got to understand the details, understand how it would change every night, see patterns form where there hadn’t been patterns before.\u201d <\/p>\n

By the time the world opened back up, McCormack\u2019s photography had fundamentally changed. \u201cI\u2019d become, by then, a different photographer,\u201d he said. Instead of grand landscapes and sweeping vistas, McCormack was drawn to \u201cthese small patterns and these small vignettes in nature.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI just started to see them everywhere,\u201d he recalled. <\/p>\n

The patterns McCormack has captured and rediscovered since fill the pages of his new monograph Patterns: Art of the Natural World.<\/a> In it, readers will find arresting and colorful photographs with subjects that are recognizable and also virtually indistinguishable. Sand dunes turn into line drawings, microscopic organisms to jewels, and rivers more closely resemble woven yarn than running water. <\/p>\n

McCormack estimates two-thirds of the photos in the book were made during and after the pandemic; the rest are past works he found while digging through his archive. <\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve been a photographer for 40 years and it turns out that I’ve been photographing patterns for a lot of that time,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was just never an intentional thing. It was just sort of part of who I was.\u201d <\/p>\n

While many of the pictures are from far-off corners of the planet, McCormack emphasizes: \u201cNature is never that far away.\u201d The book includes a macro image of a hibiscus flower from his friend\u2019s suburban garden and photos from his first days walking on that Northern California beach. <\/p>\n

Ultimately, McCormack\u2019s hope is that his book \u2014 which is intentionally not \u201ca fine art book\u201d \u2014 will help people feel like nature is accessible to them. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is designed to be able to go anywhere and be accessible by anybody, with this one central message of, our world’s a pretty cool place,\u201d McCormack said. \u201cYou should go out and see it. And then maybe, after you’ve gone and seen it, maybe you’ll protect it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Editor’s note: Jon McCormack’s book “Patterns: Art of the Natural World<\/a>” was published by Damiani Books and is available now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photographer Jon McCormack has found himself repelling into Arctic ice caves in Svalbard, Norway, diving into the frigid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-488720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116588088219046634","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}